


when it all falls down, we'll be two souls in a ghosttown

by r1ker



Category: Margin Call (2011)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Slurs, i gave seth the saddest background i'm sorry in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>will finds out much more than he anticipated about seth through some early-morning pillow talk. and, as he had put it so elegantly not twelve hours earlier, "it ain't pretty" seems to be describing much more than their crumbling firm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when it all falls down, we'll be two souls in a ghosttown

**Author's Note:**

> this is for my twitter mom sydney and her letting me know that the lovely writer for margin call seems to have left his characters open to the audience's interpretation. so, as is my job, i interpreted. rather sadly, i might add
> 
> thank u madonna 4 the title btw

The first time Will wakes up with someone else in his bed and doesn’t have seconds thoughts about it is when it’s Seth. It’s Seth at his side, solid warmth colliding when Will’s thigh moves beneath the covers. At first he’s a little scared, can’t remember for a second what they did the night before – then it comes back to him. He’d blown Seth (the taste was amazing, he can remember that for sure, and so were the sounds Seth had made, completely overwhelmed), let Seth jerk him off, and they both fell asleep face first on Will’s bed completely unrecognizing of what they had done together.

 

Seth’s taken all the blankets as he’s slept on in the night, the rat bastard, balled up in the center of lush down comforter with nothing but the top of his head showing. He’s faced away from Will, breathing quietly although it can’t be seen with the way he’s enveloped himself in the bed sheets. Due to the fact he doesn’t move even when Will flops about on the bed has Will worried that maybe he’s strangled himself with 35 grand worth of linens in the night, but that seems unlikely.

 

Finally when the need grows to be all too much he rolls over and wraps himself around the length of Seth’s back. He squeezes lightly, not so much an embrace rather than grounding himself with the feel of his body in his arms. Seth stiffens, just starting to come out of sleep. He makes a few sleepy noises that shouldn’t make Will’s heart seize like they do. Goddamn, he’s in a little too deep now, and there doesn’t seem to be a tree branch he can grab at.

 

He rolls over to blink at Will sluggishly, reaching out to touch his face for not being able to see it without his contacts in. Turning his head away to yawn hard, he starts working himself out of the blanket cocoon he’s made for himself. Will, in the process, gets most of the blankets thrown onto him so he shoves them off to the foot of the bed. Then he and Seth lie in the middle of the bare bed.

 

“I never did ask you,” Will mumbles once he and Seth’s bodies have joined together again by way of their chests pressed together. “Where did you go to school? I never see your degree on the wall when I’m walking past your office.”

 

“I don’t like to think about that, mostly because I don’t remember much,” is all Seth can say, hell he practically blurts it out, for the invisible pair of hands settling over his lungs, squeezing for all they’re worth at the thought of that part of his life, not two years ago. This isn’t something he wanted Will to know anything about. He had guarded it well, a rather secret part of him told to no one else. But if now was the time to let it out in the open, he’s not going to argue. He starts to remember everything he had since repressed and it comes back in waves.

 

Like he’s living it all again with eyes closed, he can see himself. Standing on a tarmac in a set of clothes he had hurried to throw on when he found out he was going to the south for college, going against all the NYU gear he had pinned up in his room the night he confessed to his parents one of his deepest secrets.

 

He remembers not being able to stop crying when his parents put him on the plane to Arkansas, pleading with them like he had his head to the chopping block and they were two seconds away from letting their hand fall from the scythe. _I’m sorry, please, I’m so sorry!_ His mother had looked at him with eyes far too cold for a woman who had raised two children with the utmost love and affection and had her own prospering business, but there they were, glaring at him. Eyeliner immaculate and not even smudged when tears she had tried to hold back during all this began to fall when the plane door shut.

 

Before, they didn’t give him but one full day to pack, buy what toiletries and school supplies he could get with what was left in his savings account (which wasn’t all that much anyway, needless to say he had to go without a few things until his roommate’s family came through), and get his shit together.

 

He had never taken a campus tour. He didn’t know where the academic buildings were, where his finance classes would be once he did start on the requirements for his major. He didn’t sleep the night before he was due to fly south, mostly due to the fact he was terrified to sleep in the same house as his family now, but also because he needed to get himself acclimated to this new environment to get the upper hand on his family.

 

He learned all the lingo, learned where the party spots were and where kids like him would be if he were to ever get over the paralyzing fear of coming out and socialize with kids going through exactly what he was going through. He knew he was going to a place where they didn’t talk as openly about what they thought about, took things as gospel without giving much insight or background checks into what exactly they were saying and believing in. Seth thought it was crazy, trusting so blindly like that, but he understood it. He treated himself like that for a long time, he supposed.

 

So when the plane had landed and he was let off into his new life, he dried his tears. He walked to the train station with his bags slung off every surface of him, and boarded the train without another word to the hoard of people in front of him. This was a new life. Maybe not the one he had fantasized about and gabbed about to the guys in his neighborhood or at his school, but it was new. He never minded new.

 

“I bet you remember what it was like to graduate, get the degree that let you come work with us,” Will tries to prod. Seth shakes his head; it certainly wasn’t anything like that. In fact he’d been trying his hardest since moving back to New York State to forget those four years spent as an undergrad. He remembered the pleasantries of it, sure, but all the shit that led up to that diploma in his hand got thrown out the window.

 

His own graduation was scant attended, only his sister making the journey down south to sit in a sweltering basketball stadium to watch him cross a makeshift stage on a floor smelling of shoe rubber, of sweat and of what could have been had he not fucked up. It would have been great for what it was, stretching the family budget to get him right up there with the higher-ups in society, get him that education that’d certainly lead to a great job atop Wall Street.

 

The night before graduation, before he knew whether or not they’d even bother to show up showing some sort of support, he had gone back to his apartment on the outskirts of town and dried his tears with an only mildly burnt thin crust pizza, letting repeats of _Three’s Company_ play on mute in the background.

 

Not one of his most refined moments for sure. He knows why he was sent there – might not have understood the motives behind sending him to a podunk school almost corruptly within their price point for his education – but he knows.

 

Knows it was because they had found out he was gay, knew what it would seemingly do to their family that, while not refined and in society as much as others, would be dealt a crushing blow with a gay son. He had pleaded with them not to send him away, send him somewhere where he didn’t know where the exit was, but they did. They filed his application for him, snagged the acceptance letter from the mail, and finalized his plane ticket to the state capital and a train due north to the school.

 

His first roommate hadn’t been all that bad, a big frat pledge who was redshirting a year for the football team. He had dried Seth’s never-ending tears that first night in the dorm, sitting him with him into the wee hours of the night talking about nonsense to keep his mind off of the inevitable.

 

Even offered to get him dinner when Seth had mentioned something about not eating for three days (mostly out of fear), sneak down to the cafeteria and get him whatever leftovers remained following their late-night serving times. Seth had declined, knew that if he ate he’d just throw it back up out of sheer panic. That night they had gone to bed on either side of the room with promises of a trip to IHOP the next morning.

 

The guy was not bad looking to him either, and Seth liked how he didn’t favor shirts following a round in the community showers late at night, muscles rippling as he flitted around the room preparing his things for the first day of classes and football practice soon after.

 

It could never have worked between them; he had resigned himself at the time fleetingly and quickly. As much as he wished it could have – he remembers Mike’s smile, the way his eyes crinkled up when his laugh, perfect teeth included, became far too much for his face, when he hugged Seth out of excitement after acing a math test or making a good play on the field – it wouldn’t. World wasn’t quite ready for them yet, Seth supposed.

 

Tonight is not about Mike. It is about the ghost that still dangles over his shoulders all those months later, hanging around for moments like this when Seth is sated and happy to snatch it up and replace it with something dark. So he decides tonight’s as good of a night as ever to confess to Will a skeleton in a dorm room closet.

 

The rungs of the skeleton’s rather stable ribs, its legbones and armbones, are made of slurs yelled out from across the expanse of an upscale home. They are of cries of _you liar! You dishonest animal, how could you?_ And perhaps his favorite, the one his mind enjoyed playing over and over again, _you disgusting faggot, you will never find love! No one will love you like we do! Who could love someone so dishonest and inconsiderate?_

That last one had gotten to him a little and soon had him crying in the staircase in the little nook in his room. He had felt rather considerate telling them rather than letting it fester in the silence. Like he said he could have lied forever.

 

“They sent me to a school in the south not because the money was bad, they certainly had plenty of that to around if they were going to go so far to send me to school nineteen hours away,” he grits out, “but it was because I was gay. They had taken one look at their faggot son, saw how much it was fucking killing him to go so long without being _honest_ , and decided they couldn’t handle it, couldn’t handle the fact that he was just starting to be comfortable with himself after years of thinking he was filthy. So they got me a plane and a train ticket, enough money to not even get me started up there, and sent me on my way.”

 

He turns away a little more from Will, wrapping his arms around his middle like the constriction can will him away from confessing this right now. He sure as hell didn’t mention it to Sam when he was called in for his first interview. Sam had only been concerned with whether or not he had the appropriate education to work as a trader, not the institution, and certainly not the circumstances behind him going to that school.

 

It had been a godsend. He almost cried when Sam had finished talking with ‘That’s all I need to know, Mr. Bregman’ and not ‘Why Arkansas for a finance school?’ “I was eighteen years old and on a plane, by myself, crying at the top of my lungs because this was not supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to go there.”

 

He notices his jaw is aching after he’s done talking, teeth having ground together so hard they threatened to buckle under the pressure. Not even knowing his eyes had closed during his tirade, he opens them to Will’s horrified glare.

 

Will is silent and Seth decides he’s not through, not through just yet. “When I graduated, they weren’t waiting on the wayside with a new Bentley and a ten grand present like two-thirds of the assholes we work with, when they all came home from Harvard or Yale. It was my sister, the only person sitting out in that crowd for me, because she knew she was obligated to if she was to ever mend the bridge that had broken between us. She had even told me herself it was because she felt sorry for how I was, how I liked men in her words, ‘animalistically’. Not even a fuckin’ word but she just had to use it. Got to give it to her for the charm.

 

“Did you know she even tried to get me help for it after my first year in school? The asshole gave me the number of a therapist, some local one from back home that knew me for my whole fucking life! It was written on the back of some business card that no one else could tell was for someone like that and slipped into a book she had mailed me from my shelves back home.”

 

Seth wipes at his wet cheek, finds the tears there are as hot as his rage for how wrong his beloved sister did him. She was the first one he had bestowed his trust in with this secret, told her with the bedroom door locked and in hushed tones. At first she had the whole ‘Are you sure this is how you feel’ spiel prepared and he just let it slide. Six, one-half-dozen or the other, it honestly didn’t fucking matter to him. “I haven’t talked to her since I moved up here.” Will grits his teeth, small muscle in his jaw jumping.

 

He can see Rosie in front of him now, quiet and stern sitting in the mass of proud families and significant others here to see their loved one walk across that stage. When his name had been called, _Seth Hastings Bregman, magna cum laude,_ she had made eye contact with him only to nod her assent to his success even in the face of adversity.

 

A few claps from people in the audience who seemed to root for everyone in the graduating class had sounded off, even a couple of whistles from people high up in the stands, and he smiled rather sourly at their gestures. She hadn’t waited up after the ceremonies were over, Seth standing in the doorway with his graduation robe weighted down by medals and sashes earned by clawing to the top of the academic honor rolls.

 

That night Mike’s family had found him sitting at one of the fountains near the stadium, the mother having wrapped her arm around him and escorted him to Mike’s congratulatory party at a nice restaurant an hour south of their college town. He had eaten with people he spoke to once or twice before, accepting seconds even though he was doing the math in his head to how much it was going to cost to satisfy him but the mom had shrugged it off, told him not to worry, _he and Mike were college grads now and they should celebrate and not worry_. Seth hadn’t gone a second without worrying in his life, why start now?

 

(Seth had done a little celebrating with Mike in their sophomore year, if you count jerking each other off, breathing into each other’s mouths with no hopes of bringing their lips together to kiss like they both knew at the time that they had wanted more than anything, with two bags of Chinese takeout festering in the wake of their sudden realization that _holy shit I need you_ , in the refrigerator.)

 

“I miss her, I think she could have dealt with it better than they could have, but I don’t miss them,” Seth mumbles as he rolls over to press his face into the blanket. Will doesn’t follow him right away, wants to let him have this moment to let it all out.

 

Seth’s shoulders roll up, try to rid themselves of some of the tension talking about this has produced, and slowly shrug back down and relax. Will’s hands go there just as soon as he’s calmed down more, touching lightly in hopes of letting him know that what was then most certainly is not now.

 

Will clears his throat before he speaks. “You don’t have to miss people who treated you like shit. That’s not part of the deal people think you make when you find out you’re related to them.”

 

Seth knows, he knows that, but something in him makes him want to get up from his bed, negate everything he’s just griped about in this late night, and give his mom a call. Apologize for something he knows is not wrong with him.

 

“They’re my family, Will, and there’s only us four,” Seth refutes. “No one else. Most of the extended family is gone. My dad’s parents have been dead since I was little, my mother’s father died when she was young, and her mother…just faded away as a consequence. A lot of shit has gone down since then but those were the big ones, I guess.”

 

He remembers the day he found that out, saw the horror cross his mother’s face as she recalled losing her twenty-one year old father in not a whole lot of detail. She always told him she didn’t remember too much about her father, remembered what he looked and sounded like but nothing past that.

 

What she did always remind him of was how she wanted to make damn sure her future children weren’t lacking without a father, hell, both parents, since her own mother faded into the backdrop of grief thinking of a long life without her high school sweetheart at her side. It had been a lot for Seth to take in, knowing just how quickly what someone thought was their future and their whole life could be taken away in an instant like that.

 

Again with his own backstory, Seth had been her later-in-life present to his mother while she was at the tender age of forty, a surprise culminating when a vasectomy and tubal ligation righted themselves despite numerous reassurances on the behalf of mindful gynecologists that they wouldn’t, that little Rosie would have been their only one. They had fought for her, losing three children before their time, and ended up with Seth by way of a six-pack and a loss of inhibition.

 

“I know they’ve been through a lot. They’ve all lived in different times, seen things they didn’t understand or didn’t know how to respond to, and part of me doesn’t blame them for being pissed at me. I know that’s terrible but I can’t see any way out of thinking that because I... that’s all I know how to think. The last thing they probably expected to have happen to them was to see their son confess that to them.”

 

“That doesn’t mean you have to forgive them for all the awful shit they did to you, Seth. I haven’t talked to my brothers in ages because they did the same shit to me, would constantly goad me for their misfortunes and all that shit. They found out I was bi, used it against me in some of the worst fucking ways, then had the gall to get pissy when I didn’t invite them to New York for the week I had my mum and dad over. I don’t want people in my life who don’t want me, yeah?” Will explains firmly.

 

He knows where Seth’s coming from, knows it all too well, but it’s not good, that way of thinking. “You’ve got to know, it’s gotta work both ways if you’re ever going to have a good relationship with people. One-sided stuff is just that, one-sided. You’re the only one putting in effort and that’s not fair.”

 

Will’s lips press against his cheek, the tip of his nose trailing along Seth’s jaw. He’s usually not this affectionate with anyone else but Seth. Come to think of it, he’s not this kind to anyone that’s not Seth. Maybe he’s got a soft spot for him, maybe he relates to him for just this thing they’re discussing. It could also be both, who’s he to say. “They went through bad shit and that’s all its own can of worms. They can’t use that against you for the fact that you’re gay, man. That’s fucked up.”

 

Seth knows, he can’t reiterate this enough, but he can’t just let those people go. The times he had with them weren’t bad at all before what he’s deemed The Thing has happened. He loved his sister, loved who he called from a young age his rosebud, loved the way his dad called him angel even when he grew much too old to be called that.

 

There’s an old video somewhere in his apartment of Seth’s first birthday, so frazzled in quality by time that he’s got to restart it six or seven times to even get the picture to show up, but the sound is as clear as day. He can still hear his father, deep tones from a man not shown on camera but bustling around where the video’s set in the family’s kitchen because “Sara, I’m not at all photogenic,” talking to the baby in the high chair at the dining table, _angel, you’re my angel,_ and it kills him.

 

The last words his father said to him were _I don’t want to think about what a faggot would do to this family’s reputation._

Seth was amazed not at the words being spoken – he’d heard his fair share of slurs over the course of his life, this wasn’t really anything new even if it was coming from his own father – but this was the same man who gave him life, brownies after school when the getting got rough, advice on how to make it through each day without feeling dreadful.

 

Sometimes it wasn’t just the tangible things; Seth found himself going to his father first for things. He loved his mother and sister, if they told him to jump he’d ask how high, but his dad just _got it_ sometimes. Understood without him explaining it, most of the time with a nod that told him just how little he had to talk about it for his dad to get the whole picture and not just snips of it.

Crazy how people can have such astounding duality, right? For the moment, for until he decides to come through and right what he’s wronged for the last several years, fuck it, fuck him. And, most importantly, fuck the fact that people can flip flop so easily on things they’ve never really heard or seen before in living color.

 

He hates to make it sound so harsh in his mind but, considering all that’s happened in the firm with Tuld and having to get rid of stock like it’s going out of style, he is in no mood or even room to make such frivolous promises to people that probably forgot he was alive.

 

Seth scoffs and rolls over, gives in to how Will wants to wrap him up in his arms one more time. He thinks about how this repulses his family, the fact that he seeks comfort in one of his coworkers must make them sick to their stomachs. Through it all he smiles like he doesn’t have a choice to, starts to like the fact that he’s comfortable doing this.

 

And if they’re not, well, to hell with them.


End file.
